“What?”

“Sign over the club to us. We’ll even pay you a dollar for it.”

“Why would I do that? You got no body! You can’t go to the cops! What are you gonna say? ‘I’m a fairy. I’m allergic to lemons.’” She laughed. “Who’s gonna believe that?”

Barry said weakly, “Fairies?”

Jeff didn’t say anything. He hadn’t known the triplets were allergic to lemons. He didn’t realize his lover was a fairy. I worry about the human race.

“Barry should go,” I suggested.

Claude seemed to rouse himself. He’d been looking at Rita the way a cat eyes a canary. “Good-bye, Barry,” he said politely, as he untied the stripper. “I’ll see you at the club tomorrow night. Our turn to take up the money.”

“Uh, right,” Barry said, getting to his feet.

Claudine’s mouth had been moving all the while, and Barry’s face went blank and relaxed. “See you later, nice party,” he said genially.

“Good to meet you, Barry,” I said.

“Come see the show sometime.” He waved at me and walked out of the house, Claudine shepherding him to the front door. She was back in a flash.

Claude had been freeing Jeff. He kissed him, said, “I’ll call you soon,” and gently pushed him toward the back door. Claudine did the same spell, and Jeff’s face, too, relaxed utterly from its tense expression. “’Bye,” the bouncer called as he shut the door behind him.

“Are you gonna mojo me, too?” I asked, in a kind of squeaky voice.

“Here’s your money,” Claudine said. She took my hand. “Thank you, Sookie. I think you can remember this, huh, Claude? She’s been so good!” I felt like a puppy that’d remembered its potty-training lesson.

Claude considered me for a minute, then nodded. He turned his attention back to Rita, who’d been taking the time to climb out of her panic.

Claude produced a contract out of thin air. “Sign,” he told Rita, and I handed him a pen that had been on the counter beneath the phone.

“You’re taking the bar in return for your sister’s life,” she said, expressing her incredulity at what I considered a very bad moment.

“Sure.”

She gave the two fairies a look of contempt. With a flash of her rings, she took up the pen and signed the contract. She pushed up to her feet, smoothed the skirt of her dress across her round hips, and tossed her head. “I’ll be going now,” she said. “I own another place in Baton Rouge. I’ll just live there.”

“You’ll start running,” Claude said.

“What?”

“You better run. You owe us money and a hunt for the death of our sister. We have the money, or at least the means to make it.” He pointed at the contract. “Now we need the hunt.”

“That’s not fair.”

Okay, that disgusted even me.

“Fair is only part of fairy as letters of the alphabet.” Claudine looked formidable: not sweet, not dotty. “If you can dodge us for a year, you can live.”

“A year!” Rita’s situation seemed to be feeling more and more real to her by then. She was beginning to look desperate.

“Starting… now.” Claude looked up from his watch. “Better go. We’ll give ourselves a four-hour handicap.”

“Just for fun,” Claudine said.

“And, Rita?” Claude said, as Rita made for the door. She paused, looked back at him.

Claude smiled at her. “We won’t use lemons.”

*

*

I found the invitation in the mailbox at the end of my driveway. I had to lean out of my car window to open it, because I’d paused on my way to work after remembering I hadn’t checked my mail in a couple of days. My mail was never interesting. I might get a flyer for Dollar General or Wal-Mart, or one of those ominous mass mailings about pre-need burial plots.

Today, after I’d sighed at my Entergy bill and my cable bill, I had a little treat: a handsome, heavy, buff-colored envelope that clearly contained some kind of invitation. It had been addressed by someone who’d not only taken a calligraphy class but passed the final with flying colors.

I got a little pocketknife out of my glove compartment and slit open the envelope with the care it deserved. I don’t get a lot of invitations, and when I do, they’re usually more Hallmark than watermark. This was something to be savored. I carefully pulled out the stiff, folded paper and opened it. Something fluttered into my lap: an enclosed sheet of tissue. Without absorbing the revealed words, I ran my finger over the embossing. Wow.

I’d strung out the preliminaries as long as I could. I bent to actually read the italic typeface.

Eric Northman

and the Staff of Fangtasia

Request the honor of your presence

at Fangtasia’s annual party

to celebrate the birthday of

the Lord of Darkness

Prince Dracula

On January 13, 10:00 p.m.

music provided by the Duke of Death

Dress Formal RSVP

I read it twice. Then I read it again.

I drove to work in such a thoughtful mood that I’m glad there wasn’t any other traffic on Humming-bird Road. I took the left to get to Merlotte’s, but then I almost sailed right past the parking lot. At the last moment, I braked and turned in to navigate my way to the parking area behind the bar that was reserved for employees.

Sam Merlotte, my boss, was sitting behind his desk when I peeked in to put my purse in the deep drawer in his desk that he let the servers use. He had been running his hands over his hair again, because the tangled red gold halo was even wilder than usual. He looked up from his tax form and smiled at me.

“Sookie,” he said, “how are you doing?”

“Good. Tax season, huh?” I made sure my white T-shirt was tucked in evenly so that the MERLOTTE’S embroidered over my left breast would be level. I flicked one of my long blond hairs off my black pants. I always bent over to brush my hair out so my ponytail would look smooth. “You not taking them to the CPA this year?”

“I figure if I start this early, I can do them myself.”

He said that every year, and he always ended up making an appointment with the CPA, who always had to file for an extension.

“Listen, did you get one of these?” I asked, extending the invitation.

He dropped his pen with some relief and took the sheet from my hand. After scanning the script, he said, “No. They wouldn’t invite many shifters, anyway. Maybe the local packmaster, or some supe who’d done them a significant service… like you.”

“I’m not supernatural,” I said, surprised. “I just have a… problem.”

“Telepathy is a lot more than a problem,” Sam said. “Acne is a problem. Shyness is a problem. Reading other people’s minds is a gift.”

“Or a curse,” I said. I went around the desk to toss my purse in the drawer, and Sam stood up. I’m around five foot six, and Sam tops me by maybe three inches. He’s not a big guy, but he’s much stronger than a plain human his size, since Sam’s a shapeshifter.

“Are you going to go?” he asked. “Halloween and Dracula’s birthday are the only holidays vampires observe, and I understand they can throw quite a party.”

“I haven’t made up my mind,” I said. “When I’m on my break later, I might call Pam.” Pam, Eric’s second-in-command, was as close to a friend as I had among the vampires.

I reached her at Fangtasia pretty soon after the sun went down. “There really was a Count Dracula? I thought he was made up,” I said after telling her I’d gotten the invitation.

“There really was,” Pam said. “Vlad Tepes. He was a Wallachian king whose capital city was Târgoviste, I think.” Pam was quite matter-of-fact about the existence of a creature I’d thought was a joint creation of Bram Stoker and Hollywood. “Vlad III was more ferocious and bloodthirsty than any vampire, and this was when he was a live human. He enjoyed executing people by impaling them on huge wooden stakes. They might last for hours.”